


Reenactors, Chapter 6

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Series: Reenactors [6]
Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the outset of the engagement between the <i>Shannon</i> and <i>Chesapeake</i>, Jack and Stephen find themselves inexplicably on the deck of <i>USS Constitution</i> in Boston two hundred years in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reenactors, Chapter 6

**14 June 2013 -- Friday**

Stephen met Jack at the ship at when _Constitution_ closed for the day at 6 p.m.. The plan was to walk home, Jack would change and then they would walk up to Sullivan’s Pub up on Main Street to meet Katharine during her dinner break for Happy Hour, a rite with which they were unfamiliar. Jack had been looking forward to it since Stephen had mentioned it on Tuesday evening, as he was planning on ordering grog. Stephen was dubious about the prospect of it in any way resembling actual ship’s grog, but Jack was prepared to describe it in detail to the barkeeper should the need arise and had written a rough description of it before leaving for work.

They were about to cross First Avenue at Baxter Road to begin their uphill trudge when Stephen looked up at almost a sixty-five degree angle.

“Jack, look!  Tis _Oceanodroma leucorhoa_. It is in the book Dr. Beales wrote of the rare birds of New England.” Stephen said, pointing and stepping off the curb just as the articulated bus made its extremely wide right turn, striking him to Jack’s infinite horror as he saw Stephen’s body sail across the sidewalk and crash to the ground.

  


Jack sat in near shock in his uniform in an armless plastic stacking chair in an emergency admissions cubicle at Massachusetts General Hospital. Seeing Stephen struck by the bus had affected him so that he could barely hear and understand any of the Americans. His own reactions felt slowed, as though he were underwater. The speech of the admissions clerk, a Ms. G. Brooks, as her nameplate informed him, was particularly difficult for him to understand.

“What is his name?” The clerk said, gazing over her reading glasses at him.

“Stephen FitzGerald.” Jack said, hoping that he had remembered it correctly. Stephen had insisted on Jack memorizing both of their identities. Jack found it hard enough to remember that he was John A. Melbury. He had to repeat Stephen's name to Ms. Brooks multiple times and spell it out as well.

"Middle name?"

"Maturin."

“Beginning with an “M” as in “Mary”?”

“Yes.” She typed “M” for middle initial.

"Date of birth?"

"March 25." Jack said slowly, subtracting Stephen's age from 1813 and then adding two hundred years. "March 25, 1976."

"Social Security Number?" Jack was not exactly certain to what she was referring. Stephen had attended to their documents. He did not remember what they had or what they were called.

"I do not know."

“Address?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Address. Where he lives?” Jack finally realized she meant the direction of their apartment.

“Oh. 9 Monument Street.”

“Is that Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Zip?”

“I do not know.” Jack said, as he had no idea what she was referring to.

“Telephone?”

“No.” She looked at him in near disbelief.

“He doesn't have a telephone? You don't have a telephone? No cell phone? No home phone? No work phone?”

“We are visitors and our baggage was stolen the first day we arrived here.” Jack said, grateful that Stephen had told him to use this lie as an excuse whenever appropriate.

“Emergency contact?” Jack looked at her without any comprehension. “An emergency person for us to contact, a friend or family member.”

“Oh.” Jack said. He pulled out of his waistcoat the business card Stephen given him for Dr. Beales in the very unlikely instance that Jack would need to call Stephen at the library. He handed the card to the woman, who typed the information and gave him the card back.

“Employer?”

“We are visiting. He is a physician, but he is a visiting scholar at Harvard University.”

“Identification?” Stephen had explained that their papers were now called "identification."

“I do not have it with me. Was it not in his pocket?” The clerk shrugged.

“Insurance?”

“I am not certain.” Ms. Brooks looked at him with some exasperation, but given the transit authority would be paying and that they were evidently foreigners, she did not press the issue, ticking the boxes for "Is this admission the result of an accident?" and filling the relevant fields in without discussing it with him.

"You live together?" She said looking him over and raising an eyebrow.

"Yes."

"Are you his primary responsible party?" He looked at her intently, sure that the words had been said in the English language but incapable of extracting meaning from them.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your relationship to  Dr.FitzGerald. Are you his primary responsible party? It's a violation of HIPAA laws for the hospital to discuss his care with anyone but his primary responsible party since he is unconscious and he cannot consent. Are you just a friend or are you a family member?” The clerk asked. More incoherence. He frowned and then with effort stopped himself. These people were taking care of Stephen. It was not their fault that he could not understand them. He must be completely civil to them no matter how irrelevant or nonsensical their questions might be. He had to give this woman whatever answers it was she wanted in order to see Stephen. All he could think of was seeing Stephen. It had been two hours since Stephen had been taken away and Jack was approaching being distraught with worry for him.

“I beg your pardon?”  Jack repeated, trying to sound as patient and respectful as humanly possible.

“I said, are you just a friend or are you a family member?  Because of the federal HIPAA laws, only a family member will be admitted to see him until he regains consciousness.” She said, typing. “You must be legally related to him to be able to see him if he is unconscious. How are you related? Are you his spouse?” Jack sat in the chair, gravely parsing her words and considering. “Spouse” did not register as meaning anything to him. He would say anything to this woman to be able to see Stephen. It was one more lie in a damnable tapestry of lies to these beings who were making him answer their absurd questions whilst Stephen was lying on his deathbed. He looked at her very somberly.

“Yes.”

“Your name?”

“John Melbury.” She typed his name, pressed a key and forms started sputtering out of the printer. She ripped them off and took a pen from her pencil cup and handed it to him, highlighting and writing the letter X where she wanted him to sign.

“Do you have identification, Mr. Melbury?” Jack pulled out the assortment of documents he carried in his waistcoat pocket and offered them to her. She took the non-driver ID out of the pile and ran it through her scanning machine and gave it back to him.

“Sign here, Mr. Melbury, and here and here and here and then you can go back.” Jack signed and she gave him a pile of papers and an orderly came and got him and took him back through the doors of the Emergency Room into the treatment rooms. Jack stared down at the back of the orderly’s white shoes as he walked, attempting to see as little as possible.

Jack loathed hospitals and had avoided them like the plague the entire time he had been in the Navy. He had forced himself to visit shipmates on the rare occasions they had been hospitalized and it had done nothing to improve his estimation of them. In his experience, for a patient to even survive admission was not likely. Friends had gone in and never come out or had come out so ill that their careers were effectively over and death followed usually within a year. He would pick any surgery at Stephen’s hands on board a ship over admission to any hospital.

The orderly motioned him in through blue curtains and there he looked down and saw Stephen, very pale and unconscious on a gurney, changed into a blue green hospital gown. Jack had never seen anyone with tubes inserted into their body. Something about the sight was extremely upsetting to him. He had seen Stephen injured in more awful ways than he could possibly remember over the years, including seeing him performing surgery in his own chest cavity, but seeing Stephen intubated, with a ventilation bag attached to an endotracheal tube, a nasogastric tube, an IV in his hand, leads all over his chest and catheterized under the bright fluorescent lights was one of the most horrifying sights of Jack’s life.  He was utterly appalled. The only sight more upsetting to him had been seeing Stephen on the rack in Mahón.

“Dear God,“ Jack thought, “oh, dear God, let him recover.  Oh, my poor old Stephen.” He moved next to the gurney and touched Stephen’s hand. A dark skinned, short, youngish man in a white lab coat with pewter framed eyeglasses and his name embroidered in red thread over the left breast pocket came in with a clipboard. He snapped x-rays up on the view boxes on the wall and flipped the light switches on and looked at his clipboard.

“Mr. uh, Melbury? I’m Dr. Jay Reddy, the chief of emergency medicine for this shift.” The doctor said, extending his hand to shake Jack’s. “The good news is no fractures, just some contusions and lacerations, no internal bleeding. Your husband took a bit of a blow to the head when the bus hit him." Jack started at the word "husband," and decided it must mean something other than what he thought it meant. "We think he’s probably going to be fine, we have to wait and see how long it takes him to come to. Nothing’s broken, just a minor concussion. He got very lucky."

"What are those things, those tubes?" Jack said, very quietly.

"The paramedics get a little overenthusiastic, but they would rather be on the cautious side. He's going to be fine. We can take airway out so he can talk when he wakes up. He is breathing fine on his own." Dr. Reddy said and walked over to Stephen and pulled the endotracheal tube out of his mouth, a sight that nauseated Jack. Dr. Reddy consulted his clipboard. "How old is he?”

“Thirty-seven.” Jack said, after a rough subtraction in his head.The doctor wrote something down.

“MBTA’s got a terrible record for pedestrian accidents, especially with those articulated buses. They have five times the rate of pedestrian accidents of all other buses and twenty percent of all fatalities. We get one a month, at least. I hope you guys sue the bejesus out of them. Is he on any medication? Any medical conditions?

“No.”

“Does he have a seizure disorder?” Jack had no idea what the doctor meant.

“I do not know. Not that I know of.”

“Occupation?”

“He is a physician.” The doctor looked up, surprised.

“Really? Where?”

“He is not practising medicine right now. He is a visiting scholar at the university, at Harvard.”

“Oh. OK. Well, you can stay here, we will keep an eye on his vitals from the nurse’s station and someone will be back in about thirty minutes to check on him. He’s not really very deeply comatose, he did respond to painful stimuli and the neurologist said he’s about a ten on the Glasgow Coma Scale. You can try talking to him to wake him up. Go ahead and sit down.” Jack sat next to Stephen and the doctor left. Jack sighed.

“Dear old Stephen, I am here. We are in hospital in Boston. We are still here. It is still 2013 and we are still here.” He reached and took Stephen’s hand in his. “The doctor has a machine and they made some kind of picture of your head and he said no bones are broken. They told me this is the best hospital in all of America, in the entire world, in fact. Stephen, you cannot leave me here alone. Dear God, Stephen, pray do not leave me.” Jack said, his voice breaking.

“Jack, I am fine.” Stephen said, slurring somewhat. Jack jumped up and looked at him. Stephen was trying to open his eyes, blinking hard, like a man shaken out of a deep, deep sleep.

“Can you hear me?” Jack said.

“Yes."

“Thank God.” Jack said."Oh, thank God."

“What happened?”

“You were struck by one of those giant carriages they call a bus. We were crossing the street. You were looking up at a bird and the bus turned right and hit you.” A nurse and Dr. Reddy came in.

“Dr. FitzGerald? Can you hear me?” Dr. Reddy turned the lights off and stood over Stephen, shining a very bright LED pen light in his eyes, checking the reactivity of his pupils.

“Yes.” Stephen said, frowning. The nurse turned the lights on.

“I am Dr. Reddy and you are in the emergency room at Mass General. We’re going to send you upstairs to a room.”

“I want to go home.” Stephen said, irritably. “For all love, I am fine. I want to go. I could get up and walk out without so much as a crutch.” He glared savagely at Dr. Reddy.

“Of course you do, but you are going upstairs. You need to spend the night for observation. It's going to be on MBTA’s dime. We've got a nice private room for you. They will send up some dinner for both you and your husband. Nothing to worry about. We just need to keep you for observation. The orderly is going to come and get you in a little while. We got a bed for you. Sir, you can spend the night in the room with him as well, there's a reclining chair." He said, looking at Jack.

An hour later, they were in a private room overlooking the Charles River.

“Jack, you told them I was a physician?” Stephen said, when the last hospital employee had left his room and the door was closed. He and Jack were alone. Jack stood staring out the window at the lights on the river and in Cambridge.

“Stephen, pray forgive me. I was so very brain addled that I said so inadvertently when the clerk asked me your occupation. I beg your pardon.”

“They believe that you and I are married to each other? Such a thing is possible?” Stephen said, frowning. His head was starting to pound. Jack's face became bright pink.

“The clerk asked me dozens of questions before I would be admitted to see you. I did not understand much of what she said. She asked me my relation to you and told me that I must be what she called legally related to you to be allowed to see you at all. She used many terms I could not fathom in the least, no matter how they explained them, Stephen, but it was clear that if I did not say the right thing, I should not be admitted to see you. She was explicitly clear about that fact, saying that it was because of some law. The clerk downstairs asked if I was your spouse with the implication I presumed that if I said yes I might see you. I had no idea of what she meant, though at the time, if they had asked, I should have taken a sacred oath that I was in fact Beelzebub and God rot my bloody soul in hell. They had taken you away. They would not let me see you. I had no idea where you were or what your state was, if you were dead or alive. I had not seen you for over two hours. I do not know the ways of these people or their customs or laws. They told me if I was just your friend, I could not see you. My God, Stephen, I thought I should never see you alive again.” Jack said, his eyes smarting.

"Jack, I was not in any danger of dying. The Dear knows I was never in any danger of dying." Stephen said testily. Jack looked at him and trembled with barely supressed umbrage.

"You cannot say that; you do not know that; you have no idea. You say that, Stephen Maturin, sitting there, proud as Lucifer; you did not see yourself being struck and flying through the air and landing like a plum pudding dropped onto a pile of bricks. A colossal carriage the size of a sloop hit you making more than ten knots. You have the damnedest luck, Stephen. You have the most horrible accidents and seemingly no permanent damage, bless you. I thought you were dead. I was certain you were dead." Jack said and tears welled up in his eyes."They would not let me see you..." Jack said, miserably. The entire scene flashed before him, the sirens, the police, the fire truck and ambulance, the bus passengers disembarking the now accident scene paralyzed bus and staring at Stephen's body in curiosity, Jack's own sense of complete helplessness as he watched the paramedics taking Stephen's inert body away on the gurney they slid into the back of the ambulance, leaving Jack standing there. The policeman taking the report had taken pity on him and had been very kind; he had driven Jack to Mass General, had told him it was the very best hospital on the face of the earth, not to worry, had led him to emergency admissions and told an orderly to get the gentleman a Coke unless they wanted another case of shock in their ER. Jack sat staring hollowly at the television playing _Phineas and Ferb_ on the Disney Channel in the waiting area until Ms. Brooks had come out and retrieved him, the man in the ornate Halloween costume who belonged to their John Doe.

“Oh, soul." Stephen said and sighed, feeling intense guilt over how obviously distraught Jack was, given how usually he excelled at dissimulating in the face of the injury of others. "Do you by any chance have my spectacles?" Jack took them out of his waistcoat pocket. Astonishingly, they were not broken, not even scratched. Stephen put them on and looked around. He could still not read the legends on the display of the monitors attached to him. "Jack, what does that say, if you please?"

Jack stood up and looked at the monitor and read, frowning. “ECG. SpO2. N1BP. RESP. It is Greek to me.”

"How extraordinary." Stephen said, looking down at the leads glued on his chest, the clip on his fingertip, the tube taped into his hand via a peripheral cannula with Lactated Ringer's solution flowing into his veins. He felt the NG tube taped to his face and swallowed, to see what it felt like. He lifted his gown and the blankets and looked at the catheter, the tube leading to a partially filled bag of his urine. "These inventions have progressed physic beyond my wildest imaginings. How many times have I dreamt of a tube like this and all of what I might have done with it, with just a simple, flexible tube." Stephen said, feeling the IV tubing. He reached and touched his own head gently. There was quite a lump and his ears were ringing, but he did not feel that bad considering what had happened. He wondered how much the treatment was mitigating the pain and other symptoms and what drugs if any they were giving him. He squinted at the piggyback IV, looked at the machine controlling the flow of the clear fluid drop by drop and then back at Jack's exhausted, careworn face.

Stephen reached for Jack's hand.

"Brother, pray go and ask the nurse to call for a priest for me. A Roman Catholic priest, Jack, only a Roman Catholic priest." Jack looked alarmed. "Jack, 'tis fine, I am not dying. This may be my only opportunity to be confessed and as I told you, I killed two men the morning Diana and I escaped from the hotel. Pray go ask for a priest, I beg you. This may be my only opportunity to get absolution."

"Certainly, Stephen." Jack said, leaving the room.

The priest, a severe looking gaunt older man, did not smile at Jack when he left Stephen's room. "The poor man has a serious head injury." He said, glowering at Jack. "I don't normally have confession for the delusional." Jack tried to look as meek as possible.

"He was most insistent, Father. He was very agitated and insistent."

"You are his..." the priest's face wrinkled in distaste and he spat out the words "his spouse?"

"Yes." Jack said, restraining his very strong desire to punch the man in the face. "Only for Stephen," he thought, "only for Stephen..."

"Tell him to look both ways before he crosses the street." The priest said and left. Jack went in the room.

"He did not believe me," Stephen said."But it is all to the good. I am absolved, given the Eucharist and anointed as well." Jack took his hand.

"Did he seem most unaffable and evil-tempered for a parson, Stephen, or was that just an erroneous impression on my part?"

"Perhaps he thought I was making game of him. No, he was none too pleasant, Jack. First he seemed to think I had some brain injury and then he was visibly disgusted when I confessed to committing sodomy with you." Jack's eyes flashed and he flushed crimson.

"You told that miserable scrub of a priest..." Jack said, unable to get the words out.

"Strange that people are supposed to be so much more liberal now than in our time and no priest in our time ever looked at me with such contempt and disgust after the dozens of times I have confessed to carnal acts with you. Jack, are you very angry with me?" Stephen said, peering into Jack's face.

"No," Jack said in a strangled voice, "no, of course not." He smiled wanly. Stephen sat up and looked around. He was holding a brochure for the hospital that had been in the bedside table.

"It is a most remarkable place. They have an actual museum in this hospital, a museum of medical history and innovation. Tis so clean, there is no odor that I associate with hospitals. No smell of death, of disease or decay. This bed is genius." Stephen said, looking at the buttons to elevate the head and feet and raise and lower the whole. He picked up the control for the call button for the nurse and examined it. "Jack, see what is in that door." Jack looked.

"It is a privy with a scullery, what they call a sink."

"How did I get here?"

"A very large, very long red carriage with a very loud noise maker came very soon after the bus hit you, within five minutes. A man came and said he was something -- I do not recall, Stephen. He was in charge, he knew what to do. A yellow and white coach showed up with doors that opened in the back, a little room. Two other motor carriages with constables came. The man in charge had the men in the coach with the room take out a wheeled litter and they took you away. The constable was most kind. He asked some questions and knew exactly where I should be brought and brought me here."

"How did they know to come?"

"I have no idea of it." Jack said. He had been so shocked that he had been virtually glued next to Stephen, kneeling next to his body, searching his face for any sign of life. It had seemed that time had stopped and that simultaneously, things happened dizzyingly fast. Jack had never known such complete terror in his entire life and he had no idea of what to do. People in London who were struck by coaches generally either hobbled away or died in the street or nearby. Stephen had told him a man could be killed by being moved the wrong way, that unless there was danger of immediate death, such as during battle, no man should be moved after a fall without the supervision of the ship's surgeon -- something about the spine. It had all flashed before him, what losing Stephen now would mean, a fate he felt to be actually worse than death itself. He hated himself for this craven and unmanly weakness, for the emotional display that Stephen had most certainly not appreciated, but the thought of the next thirty-five years completely alone in the twenty-first century -- he could not possibly plumb the depths of that horror.

Stephen pressed the call button and within five minutes a nurse, a woman dressed in flowered surgical scrubs, came in.

"What may I do for you, Sir?" She said, looking at Stephen and then with more frank curiosity at Jack, in his uniform.

"I wish to get up and walk. Surely this is not all necessary, my dear Madam." Stephen said, gesturing across his body to the assortment of tubes and leads. She looked at him dubiously.

"Where do you want to walk?" He pointed to the bathroom. "I can bring you a bedpan."

"I think not." He said, coldly. She came to the bedside, unstrapped the catheter bag from the side of the bed, put the side down and stood before him.

"Let's see what you've got, Dr. FitzGerald." He slowly lowered his bare feet to the floor. She offered him her hands to balance and he scowled and stood on his own. "Pretty impressive for someone who got hit by a bus three hours ago, Doctor, but this will weaken your suit against MBTA, you realize, when I chart that you stood up on your own at 9:30 p.m."

"I thank you." Stephen said dismissively. She turned away from he so he could not see her roll her eyes.

"You come here and walk with him." The nurse said to Jack and she left. Jack stood next to Stephen and Stephen quickly grabbed him around the chest to maintain his balance.

"Jack, pray be so good. You must move these two carts on the wheels to the privy and help me." Stephen said. Jack reached for the IV pole and the vital signs monitor and dragged them over and then helped Stephen to the bathroom. Stephen examined the catheter, disconnected the tubing from the bag, pulled the end off of the balloon port and drained the tubes in the toilet and then took a deep breath, blew out through his lips and yanked the Foley catheter out and put the apparatus in the sink. Jack winced.

"Stephen, will they not be most cross with you for doing that?"

"That is little my concern, soul. It is utterly ingenious," he said, examining the parts of the catheter, "though completely unnecessary for me now. I should have given my eye teeth to have one of these in our time. Benjamin Franklin made one of these of metal, Jack. Metal, forsooth. It is most amazing how medicine has changed. Pray see if you can obtain some paper and a pen. I wish to take some notes."

"After you get back in the bed, Stephen." Stephen was ready to utter a very tart comment, but the expression on Jack's face stopped him. He reached up as if to support himself on Jack's shoulder and stroked Jack's face. "My poor Jack. I should not have put him through that for the world." Stephen thought very sadly. "I fear the damage to him has been far greater than to me."


End file.
